


You're Not Here

by CrumblingAsh



Series: Terminal Show [5]
Category: Silent Hill, Silent Hill (2006), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bruce as Alessa's father, Dark!Tony, Gen, Horror, M/M, Protective Bruce, Protective Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 14:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrumblingAsh/pseuds/CrumblingAsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We shouldn’t have run,” he whispers, and it’s not what he means to say, but he means what he says regardless. “We should have stayed, should have fought more. We could have been there for her. I would have-.”</p><p>“You would have died,” Tony hisses, sharp and low, cutting him off, and this time Bruce does flinch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're Not Here

* * *

 

The machines play a song of steady beeps and cries, soothing as a knife against skin after days of torture, pleading not to be removed.

 

Above, the lamps stutter light and hiss power, crackling across lines in a vicious game of tag, flickering and chasing and mischievous; safe because they are all that is. Shadows sink into corners and skip across the floor, moving at each flash. This place doesn’t seem comforting, or safe, or right at all – and in that, is everything it claims not to be.

 

Bruce has huddled as a close as he can to the room’s single bed, stolen from an undeserving hospital that treated vanity instead of wounds, in a chair snatched from the office of a lawyer, careful not to bump machines thrown out for age rather than uselessness. His hands are shaking so violently the chair quakes in sympathy, small crackles of the wood its voiced support; they shift to his hair, tightening in the curls until he feels a tinge more pain than fear.

 

Alessa’s tucked into the bed, resting on her belly, cocooned under soft white sheets that conceal the numerous cords attached to her body, hiding the bandages that cover the wicked burns he could not save her from. A line or two dance up from her neck, twisting up like thorned vines, wrapping around her ear to peak at the edge of her temple – already white, already scarred. Her hair is nothing more than strands in the back. It’s as if she stepped off the pages of a book of war victims, arms spread wide and dripping with napalm, screaming for her mother to stop the burning.

 

With or without the scars, she looks so much like him it hurts.

 

“I am so, so sorry,” he whispers, studying her face, her small features pained even in induced sleep. His child, snatched from the fire pits of his hell; his punishment. He’s not worthy to look at her, but he can’t tear his eyes away. “ _Alessa_.”

 

 _‘And then I saw them,_ ’ the words flit into his mind unbidden, as if summoned by her name. _‘from whose presence earth and heaven fled away. And no home was left to them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, and they were judged according to their deeds. And anyone's name not found written in the book of life, they will be thrown into the lake of fire.’_

 

‘ _And anyone's name not found written in the book of life, they will be thrown into the lake of fire.’_

_‘They will be thrown into the lake of fire.’_

“Bruce.”

 

He doesn’t jump at the call of his name, doesn’t flinch though a minute tick assures that his body wants to. He pulls himself with force from Alessa, from the fog of the words that had been his childhood mantra. Tony lingers in the doorway of the room, skin washed of splattered blood yet pale, adorned in borrowed clothes that swamp his form yet don’t hide the quivering that shakes his entire body. The madness is gone from his eyes, but Bruce can still see the ice edged around his eyes as they land on Alessa, the flickering of the light’s patterns across his skin unable to hide them.

 

He doesn’t have to say anything – he never has, not with Tony, who’s been able to hear him without words since that day on the playground under the Brethren’s watchful eyes. The taller man glides forward with the grace of a deadly hunter he’s never been able to lose, coming to a stop only when they are a breath away from each other, the heat of their bodies tangling together in phantom touch that Bruce sucks in with greed as his gaze turns back to his child.

 

“She looks like you,” Tony observes softly, careful, and Bruce chokes on a noise as he nods. “Seriously.” Hesitation. “You used to look like that when you fell asleep in the loft.”

 

Exhausted. Betrayed. In pain. Stupid hope that tomorrow would be better and yesterday nothing more than a dream.

 

“We shouldn’t have run,” he whispers, and it’s not what he means to say, but he means what he says regardless. “We should have stayed, should have fought more. We could have been there for her. I would have-.”

 

“You would have _died_ ,” Tony hisses, sharp and low, cutting him off, and this time Bruce does flinch. “We _couldn’t_ fight them anymore. They would have killed you, and if not killed you, then broken you. She would have grown up without you or with a shell of you, and been dead long before they decided to burn her. And they _would have_ burned her, Bruce, because of _you_.”

 

Silence falls into the music of the machines, to the beeps and the hitches of Alessa’s labored breathing. They say nothing even when Jane, untouched by Silent Hill and its poison, edges in to check on the little girl and the instruments keeping up with her. Tony’s hand falls onto Bruce’s shoulder when his daughter whimpers lowly as the woman’s hands skim over her back lightly, and he can feel the tension of his friend’s mind through the tightening of his fingers, and this isn’t just about them anymore.

 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs when Jane leaves the room with a quiet excuse they don’t hear. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just …” He takes in his daughter’s agonized form, the peak of white bandages across her back beneath the blanket, the little face of a child he _should have known_. “I just… damn it, Tony, I just-.”

 

The harsh press of lips against his head, against his temple, against his cheek. “I get it,” Tony whispers back firmly. “I get it. But this is now, Bruce. We have her _now_. We’re going to help her, and raise her, and protect her _now_ , when she needs it.” Another heavy kiss, words spoken lower than the others. “I won’t let them hurt either of you again.”

 

Bruce, Tony’s hand solidly on him, so close to his daughter, lets the lullaby of pain slip his eyes closed.

 

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

 

They aren’t far enough from Silent Hill.

 

Tony can hear the faint, distant wailing of the town’s fire siren still stretching out, seeking any form of help that could stop the burning of carcass and flesh. If the little clinic in the woods had a window in this room, no doubt he would have been able to see the glow of reaching flames proudly inflicted across the darkness of the night. But it is safer without windows, and so he contents himself with the haunting, lonely call of the siren and the imagined screams it covers.

 

He watches from the corner by the door as Jane covers Bruce with a spare sterile blanket, as she and a silent girl introduced as Darcy efficiently change the bandages on Alessa’s back and comfort her pain before she can cry out. They leave the room again with nothing more than Jane’s promise to bring him something to eat in an hour or so, if he hasn’t fallen asleep first. She’s a good woman, Jane – so obviously not from town.

 

He’s not surprised when he sees Thor peek around the edge, thankful when the larger man’s gaze seeks out him and not the child and the other man further in the room. They share a look, heavy and solid, before the blonde’s shoulders drop, a sigh slipping past his lips before he gives a quick, solemn nod. He’ll call Loki, Tony knows. All they have right now is Loki.

 

Because Tony doesn’t think they will be able to run again.

 

He settles himself in the corner, leaned back against the wall, ears on Bruce, eyes on Alessa. She hasn’t voluntarily moved since Thor had put her on that bed, not even a twitch. Already a few of the burns have lost their wetness and scarred over, leaving delicate trails of white skin in their wake. He knows her pain, felt it in his blood the moment he and Bruce burst into the chamber from the hotel. Her screams and broken pleading for mercy had spurred the bloodlust he had suppressed for nine years, and it was only reflex that had him touching Bruce to keep the other man from falling into the same. Now she sleeps under his watch, safe with her father, safe with him, injured and vulnerable.

 

“The world shall fall the decimation,” he whispers, throat oddly parched, words scratchy and harsh, “of the demon sprayed in the blood of the heretics. The lambs shall cry out the sins shall be purified the dead shall shrivel and extinguish. And she will walk from fire, upon the shoulders of rage and fury and they shall lift her, and we shall exalt her in, and only in this will god come to us, who are clean and loyal, to smite the fanatics and raze the earth for our living.”

 

He doesn’t know why he says it.


End file.
